the sky of the sky of a tree called life
by TolkienGirl
Summary: [Netflix On My Block] It's worth missing Walt Whitman to get those damn braces off. [Monse at writing camp, learning about herself. Pre-series. Mentions of canon Monse/Cesar.]


**A/N: This show is great and I binged it in about six hours straight. So. Please watch it.**

"Not all poetry needs to rhyme."

Monse is of two minds. First of all, familiarity with verse is…kind of a given, in her neighborhood, so she's inherently skeptical of people who think they can mess around with writing but not actually play by the rules of the game.

But then again, there's e.e. cummings and Gwendolyn Brooks and Richard Siken, all of whom Monse likes plenty and who don't play with rhymes in the way most poets do.

Ruby may be the genius of their crew, but Monse doesn't need him when she's reading poetry. It's the kind of thing that lifts her up and lets her float along with it. Words have power, everyone knows that, but these kinds of words can take you away.

So yeah, Janine—the writing camp instructors go by their first names—might be a little strange, but Monse is not going to write off (ha!) her advice just like that.

She pokes the tip of her tongue between her teeth and curls her hand around a pencil. In soft lead, words that don't rhyme but sound well together all the same:

She writes.

.

 _Are you sure?_

She was breathing hard and her heart was thumping a thousand times a minute and this Cesar was not like he'd always been, he was _hers_ now, and his dark eyes were burning—

 _I'm sure._

.

Janine likes her poem.

"I can see it," she says, glancing over the top of her hipster-frame glasses. Janine is too old to be a hipster; she must be fifty or so, but her silver bob is cut sleek and sharp and sure, Monse can admit that it's kind of cool. "Good poetry is like that. You see it in the air."

Monse beams, soaking in that sunray of praise. She usually has so much to say—the boys remind her of _that_ at any opportunity—but now she stays silent. She doesn't tell Janine that she sees words in the air before she writes them down, that when she's writing she can exist in all her many pieces. She can live, comfortably, with the aching mystery of her mom, with her dad's warmth, with the boys. With what happened with Cesar, two nights before she went away.

She can live with all of it at once, but only when she is writing.

.

So: this is what Monse brings home. Officially: three poems, a short story, and a one-act play. Unofficially, the little notebook Cesar gave her is filled with scribbles. Phrases and words and the beginning of a diary in code, only Monse is impatient so she abandons that pretty soon.

.

Writing camp is an overnight thing, and Monse stays the weekends up there too, because it's three hours away from L.A. and they have a freestyle workshop on Saturdays.

One Monday, she takes the whole day off—missing the section on Walt Whitman, which is too bad—and Dad drives her all the way to the orthodontist.

It's worth missing Walt Whitman to get those damn braces off.

.

There is a little bubble of secret hope that centers in the pit of her stomach. Monse adds stupid little dreams to it, like how kissing Cesar will be easier with her braces off. Will make her less of a dumb, flat-chested kid, though that didn't seem to matter when they—

They're too young, probably. He doesn't have to any parents to look after him and she has a parent who trusts her to look after herself. So. Doesn't that make them old enough?

Doesn't it?

.

"You seem happy," Dad says, when they make the drive back to L.A. He's pointedly not commenting on her new shirt and cut-off shorts, although maybe it isn't pointed at all. Dad is pretty chill.

"I am. Can't wait to see the guys." She gauges his mood with a sideways glance and props a sneakered foot on the dash.

"I know it was a different kind of summer for you." Dad doesn't tell her to put her foot down. "But I'm so glad you had this opportunity. Love to see you pursuing your craft."

And there's that warm, sunray feeling again.

 _I'm a writer_ , she thinks, with a blossom of self-assurance, but what she says out loud is this:

"I can't wait to be home."


End file.
